Wednesday, August 09, 2006

What's With These MoveOn People?

In the wake of U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman's stunning defeat in Connecticut yesterday at the hands of anti-war candidate Ned Lamont, we're going to be reading a lot more about the liberal activist group, MoveOn.org.

Founded during the Clinton impeachment proceedings under the slogan "censure and move on," the group has since snowballed into one of the most influential, well-organized and technologically-saavy Democratic front groups out there.

Not to mention one of the most liberal.

And while MoveOn has encountered mostly mixed results in the political campaigns in which it has been involved, Lamont's 52-48 defeat of Lieberman yesterday was nonetheless a big victory in its highest-profile race to date.

Just as MoveOn turned the Lieberman race into a referendum on his support of the War in Iraq, the media turned the race into a referendum on MoveOn itself.

For his part, Lieberman, the 2000 Democratic Vice Presidential nominee, isn't finished. He's collected enough signatures to be on the November ballot and announced last night that he will run as an independent against Lamont and a Republican challenger in the general election.

So what's MoveOn's strength level in South Carolina?

Well, the group's 2004 Presidential candidate, Howard Dean, scored a lackluster fifth-place finish in the Democratic Presidential Primary here two years ago (with 5% of the vote), and the group has not seriously engaged in any big ticket Palmetto State campaigns.

In fact, most S.C. Democrats would probably view a MoveOn endorsement with about as much enthusiasm as an Osama Bin Laden endorsement.

But depending how the group manages its latest high-profile success, that could change. Polls show most South Carolinians - like most Americans - turning increasingly sour on the War in Iraq, which along with the scandals surrounding disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff is MoveOn's bread-and-butter.

Personally, we're hoping today is the high-water mark of the MoveOn success story, but it's clearly time for those of us who care about conservative ideas to start paying them some mind - even in the reddest of red states.

CHARLESTON CITY PAPER: THE SCARBOROUGH AFFAIR

It used to be that the romantic liaisons of politicians were off limits to the press. Hell, John F. Kennedy slept with everything that moved right under his wife's nose and nobody made a peep about it publicly.

This "hands off" approach is particularly true among the South Carolina press corps, which rarely writes about such indiscretions no matter how flagrant the affair may be.

That's why it was somewhat surprising to pick up this morning's copy of the Charleston City Paper and find this article outlining an alleged affair between Charleston Rep. Wallace Scarborough and Rep. Catherine Ceips.

Scarborough, who was already under fire (pardon the pun) after an incident earlier this year in which he fired a gun near two SCE&G employees working in the backyard of his parents' Charleston-area home, just isn't having a good summer. It's one thing to have your alleged affair generally acknowledged by everyone inside the Columbia beltway, it's something else to see it bandied about in the public eye.

For the most part, we like Scarborough here at FITS.

In fact, when he called us one day to object to a particular comment on our blog, we listened, saw his logic, concluded he was correct and pulled the objectionable comment.

Ceips, on the other hand, is pretty much worthless in our book. She's not particularly bright, over-reactionary in her approach to issues and tends to be a bit of a crybaby when she doesn't get her way.

How the story of this alleged affair will impact both Ceips and Scarborough's political fortunes remains to be seen, but count on FITS to keep you up to speed with the very latest developments ...

Anon - seems to me that this was broken in the Charleston City Paper and not on FITS and that Will was simply posting about a news item which appeared elsewhere. Why not bitch at the Ciy Paper first, or to the allegeded adulterers? Go buy some logic you idiot.

First Shirley Hinson and James Law. Now Wallace Scarborough and Catherine Ceips. Are there ANY members of the GOP House Caucus who can conduct themselves ethically and honorably in Columbia? Or is the cauldron of booze and hormones that floods the five block area around Assembly and Gervais too much for even the most stalwart defenders of "family values"?

Scarborough made his affair fair game when he went after the SCE&G workers. The only way that makes sense is if he thought they another round of investigators hired by his wife. AND the fiction that he's "house-sitting" for his parents is blown away by the fact he left his wife a year ago -- and his parents' house is outside his district.